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Reserved

Bud
Wendell has a winsome grin, a firm handshake and great eye contact.He
exudes enthusiasm and in an age where companies and employees no longer
feel a traditional loyalty toward each other, Wendell's career path has
proven by example that once-conventional two-way loyalty can still be
upheld.

When
Earl Wade Wendell was born on August 17, 1927, his sister, close in age
and unable to pronounce "Earl," began calling her little brother,
"Buddy."

"As
I grew up that kind of stuck. My father's name is also Earl (though
father and son do not share middle names) so it made more sense to
stick with "Bud."

And,
as he grew from Buddy to Bud, Wendell rose through the ranks of boy
scouting, becoming an assistant scoutmaster. Only the rank of Eagle
Scout-the Boy Scouts' highest achievement award- eluded him.

"I
discovered girls before I could become an Eagle Scout," Bud explains,
but even with that uncharacteristic diversion from Wendell's life-long
pattern of working his way to the top, in retirement Bud has managed to
earn the Silver Buffalo Award: the highest honor Boy Scouting can
bestow on its volunteers.

A
graduate of Akron, Ohio's public schools, Bud came of age just as World
War II was winding down, fulfilling his military service obligation via
a stint in the Navy that allowed Bud to go on Wooster College in
Wooster, Ohio (about 40-50 miles from Akron) under the G.I. Bill. (The
G.I. Bill of Rights- also known as the Servicemen's Readjustment Act-
was enacted by the United States Congress June 22, 1944. The bill
financed college educations for millions of U.S. war veterans.)

Wendell
graduated from Wooster in 1950 with a B. A. Degree in economics. Then,
as his father before him, Bud went to work for the National Life and
Accident Insurance company. (C.E. Craig, a distant relative of
bandleader Francis Craig (of "Near You" fame), bought an insurance
company in 1901. C.E.Craig created National Life in 1902.)

While
Earl Wendell worked as a manager for the National Life's Akron office,
Earl's son got around company rules that discouraged nepotism by
beginning his career in Hamilton, Ohio; as a door-to-door salesman:
"Each salesman had a small geographical area and you sold insurance by
so much a week. They'd buy a $500 policy for a quarter a week, or 50
cents a week, depending upon their age and so forth, and [I'd] go
around door-to-door and collect the premiums. I'd knock on new doors
and try to sell to the next-door neighbor.

"It
used to be very, very common. In industrialized areas, where people got
paid by the week, they paid a lot of their bills or obligations by the
week and insurance was one of them. It's not the easiest way to make a
living. I think it's a lot harder than what people seem to do today
with all of their mass-telephoning, which really gets to me. You had to
hone your craft and salesmanship and be willing to take a lot of
"noes," but that was the way you made a living."

In
1952, Wendell was transferred to Charleston, West Virginia as a staff
manager supervising five or six salesman.

"I
did that for a number of years, assuming a similar position in Logan,
West Virginia and then I was transferred back to Chillicothe, Ohio
where I had a little larger route (another supervisory position)."

Along
the way, Bud married (Wendell and his wife met at Wooster College) and
he and Lila started a family that would eventually include four
children: Lindy, Danny (now TNN's and CMT's operations/production
manager), Andy and Beth Anne.

Then,
in 1962, National Life again transferred Wendell, this time to its home
office in Nashville where he became an agency supervisor. Not long into
that job, Bud received another opportunity when WSM, Incorporated
executive George Reynolds died suddenly of a heart attack.

At
that time, what later became self-promoted as the WSM-pire included
both a radio and television station bearing the WSM call letters. The
radio and TV stations were owned by National Life and the station's
call letter stood for National Life's slogan, We Shield Millions.

When
Reynolds died, National Life began looking within its ranks to fill the
position of administrative assistant to WSM Radio's president Jack
DeWitt. Company man Wendell agreed, when asked, to fill the vacant
position with National Life's broadcast division, even though he
brought no direct job-related experience to his new position (Reynolds
had been an engineer).

But
"they wanted somebody{who}was not an engineer. They wanted somebody
that had more of a background in administrative activity- or they
thought I did or could, at any rate.

For
all of National Life's faith in Bud, exchanging his work on commission
for a salaried position did not constitute a promotion.

"Actually,
I had to take a cut in pay," but Wendell gladly accepted the pay cut,
because "I thought it had a great future and I was committed to this
company and I had come to make a career and stay with the company.

"That
sounds kind of odd to some people, [but} I intended to stay there until
I retired and if they thought it was in my best interests and in the
company's best interests for me to go over and do that job I thought
'They know what they're doing and I'm in it for the long haul."

"It
sounds like a peculiar move, but, in effect, our offices at WSM were
adjacent to the claims department at National Life. We were all in the
old five-story building downtown and we were just a department of the
broadcasting division and a department of the insurance company, so
[the job change] was not quite as abrupt as it might seem to be now.
Other than the fact that WSM had to be incorporated in order to be
licensed to broadcast, we were just a division like the claims
department, the marketing department or all of the other [National
Life] departments."

While
overseeing "personnel, budget and all of the things that had to be
attended to" in a small company of less than 100 employees, in the
performance of his duties Bud also had a growing awareness of another
National Life property: The Grand Ole Opry.

While
the Opry originated from WSM's Studio A on the fifth floor of the
National Life building on Seventh Avenue North, from its first
broadcast on November 28, 1925 to about 1928 (when National Life built
a larger Studio B in order to accommodate a studio audience of about
200), by the time Bud Wendell joined WSM, the Opry had made several
moves (including another to what became the station's Studio C in
February, 1934, followed by moves to the Hillsboro Theatre in October,
1934, East Nashville's Dixie Tabernacle in June 1936, and downtown
Nashville's War Memorial Auditorium in July, 1939) before beginning its
longest tenure to date at downtown Nashville's Ryman Auditorium (where
the Opry would remain from June, 1943 through March 15, 1974).

Despite
its rich history and endurance, Nashville had yet to embrace the Opry
at the time Wendell became a resident of what the city later claimed,
first reluctantly and then proudly, as Music City, U.S.A. Even National
Life's interest in the Opry was largely limited to its being yet
another mechanism that, through its station IDs and promotions, could
be used to sell life insurance.

"Shortly
after going with WSM, I became very interested in a lot of different
areas of broadcasting-I'm very inquisitive, as you might guess- and
when cable television came along during that period of time it turned
out to be my responsibility to try and get WSM involved in cable
television.

Of
course, it would be a couple of decades before cable TV would find
popular acceptance, so Wendell's main focus remained on his
administrative duties at WSM and overseeing its broadcasts (which
included the Friday Night Frolics, a radio stage show that had
originated from National Life's Studio C from 1948 until it moved to
the Ryman and was rechristened the Friday Night Opry in 1963) until
April, 1968 when Bud succeeded Ott Devine as Grand Ole Opry manager.

Wendell's
appointment as Opry manager may have seemed to National Life as the
next logical step in a succession of successful career moves that were
mutually beneficial to the company and its loyal company man. However
the buzz among what would later become known as the country-music
industry was that Bud was a corporate "suit" who had no special
devotion to the music that was so much a part of them.

Wendell
dismisses such thinking: "That is not right. I enjoyed country music,
[though] I was not a student of it."

A
product of the Big Band era, Bud was drawn to the music of Tommy
Dorsey. Wendell admits that while he never boasted a "big collection of
country music" to a degree, I enjoyed country music. That came about
because WSM had the clear-channel radio station, which was owned by the
company that my father worked for and then that I worked for. That was
before the FCC duplicated all of the clear-channel stations and so
WSM's signal was a very good signal up in Ohio where I lived.

"So
I was very familiar with country music and listened to it even back in
the '30s" when it was an annual tradition for one of National Life's
founders to deliver a late-night Christmas message over WSM Radio to
company employees, I enjoyed country music, I would probably say second
to Big Band music."

But
it wasn't Wendell's dedication to country music that was tested when he
assumed the task of coordinating Grand Ole Opry shows that first week
in April. It was his ability to rebound from his new place in history
as the first Opry manager ever forced to cancel a performance- and
before that performance- actually back-to-back Friday and Saturday
night performances- had even gotten off the ground!

That
decision was made for him due to the events of the evening of Thursday,
April 4,1968. Martin Luther King had been gunned down in Memphis,
Tennessee and the ensuing threats and actual incidences of rioting all
across America made downtown Nashville- just 208 miles from Memphis- a
danger zone.

On
Friday, April 5, as marches began in Nashville, Mayor Beverly Briley
(for whom Briley Parkway, the highway leading to what would become the
current home of the Grand Ole Opry, was later named) declared a
city-wide weekend curfew beginning at sunset.

"The
streets were to be cleared. I called him and I said "I understand all
this, but you must mean for everybody except for us,"and he said, 'No,
you're included.'

"So
we had no alternative. I mean, we couldn't get artists together, bands
together, even if we had wanted to do something. There was no way for
people to get out. So we did the best thing we could."

Mindful
of the show business tradition that the show must go on, that best
alternative was to reach into the Grand Ole Opry's ample archives of
taped broadcasts and air them April 5 and 6 during the Friday and
Saturday night Opry's regular time slots.

Those
tapes existed because by the time Wendell became the Grand Ole Opry's
general manager, it was customary to tape all Opry performances, edit,
chop, reposition and transfer them to a disc. Disc transcriptions were
then sold to over 400 radio stations in the United States and Canada
where portions of the full. original Opry broadcasts could then be
heard on a delayed basis.

"We
had all of this tape already done. That was no big deal, but those were
scary times, because we were having marches and we were very sensitive
to the danger.

"As
it turned out, the path of the marchers was directly by the Ryman
Auditorium, so we made the right move."

In
the weeks to come it was up to Wendell to prove that he had what it
took to deal with a residue of unpleasantness having nothing to do with
the King assassination, but rather events that had their beginning
while he was still selling insurance.

For
once Wendell took the reins, his first duties were to continue the
process of rebuilding the morale of an Opry cast that been slowly
rebounding since his predecessor, Jim Denny, who had also headed the
WSM Grand Ole Opry Artists Service Bureau from the late 1940s until he
was fired from that position September 24, 1956, set the stage for the
defection of many of the Opry's most popular artists.

Nashville-based
artist management and booking was not the competitive business it is
today and most country stars did not sell enough records to attract the
interest of Los Angeles or New York agents and managers.

Consequently,
Opry manager Jim Denny (a rather unpolished figure whom famed
songwriter John D. Loudermilk says "was raised by prostitutes") headed
the WSM Artist Service Bureau, a booking agency specifically formed to
book every Opry stars' road dates: "Jim would book these people out
Monday through Thursday and he'd book 'em back in Nashville on Friday
and Saturday night. They'd have to be there to play the Opry.

"As
the business was growing, that turned out to be sort of a conflict,
because the big money was for these artists to work around places other
than Nashville on Saturday night. The Opry was payin' 'em $10-a-night
or something, but they could go out and maybe make $200-a-night. So
there was this conflict." (Roy Acuff charged Denny with
misappropriation of funds and artist favoritism.)

"The
resolution was that Jim Denny separated himself from WSM and walked
away from being manager of the Opry."

Beyond
that, Denny who with Webb Pierce) had formed the Cedarwood Publishing
Company in 1953 (Carl Smith later became part of the Cedarwood
partnership), formed the Jim Denny Artists Bureau, upon being fired by
the same man who would become Bud Wendell's boss, WSM President Jack
DeWitt.

As
Denny branched out, other booking agencies such as the Atlas Artists
Agency, Lucky Moeller Talent and Lavender-Blake, to name a few, sprang
up and "a lot of the artists saw the opportunities to work somewhere
else on Saturday night and make a heck of a lot more money then they
could make playing the Opry, so a lot of them left the Opry.

"Well,
WSM said "Gee, we've still got to have artists here on Saturday night,'
so they put in a rule that you had to be at the Opry a certain number
of weeks per year or you were no longer going to be a member of the
Opry.

"I
would be less than honest if I didn't say that there were some hard
feelings involved. Some of the artists were unhappy with the way that
the Opry was going."

For
example, when Rose Maddox, who had joined the Opry in 1956 had
established herself as a TV star (of the Opry's short-lived one-hour
regional taped broadcast and Red Foley's ABC Network "Ozark Jubilee"),
a jealous Roy Acuff complained, threatening to quit the Opry unless
Rose's TV appearances ended. (Maddox' response was to leave the Opry.)

But
then Opry artists had been pressured with the prospect of "better"
opportunities two decades before, when then-Opry manager Harry Stone
called the Delmore Brothers into his office when Stone received a tip
that "some WLS (Radio National Barn Dance) big shots are [about to]
make you a lot of promises and tell you a lot of lies."

As
Alton Delmore wrote in his autobiography, Truth is Stranger
Than Publicity, After first offering Alton and Rabon a raise,
Stone pressured the Delmores to accept the raise, telling them that the
rival barn dance would only use the popular duo, fire them "within two
or three months and where will you be then? Without a job, because if
you leave I will never take you on the Opry again. Your career will be
ruined."(Alton Delmore also complained that Stone's predecessor, George
D. Hay, while heading the Artist Services Bureau, would not allow the
Delmore Brothers and Uncle Dave Macon to make personal appearances
together.)

Wendell
is philosophical about the events of the years preceding his Opry
tenure: "The grass is always greener on the other side. Some of those
who left regretted it. It was an emotional time.

"The
whole industry was changing: record companies were moving in here and
managers were moving here, publishing companies were moving here and it
was during that time that television finally discovered country music
and we were doing a lot of the syndicated television shows. I think in
some ways we were trying to figure out how to reposition the Opry to
keep it strong and make it attractive to artists of some stature to
come in an play and walk away from those big dates.

"Some
of the managers, publishing companies and so forth felt that the Opry
was no longer meaningful to [artists' career longevity]; that they were
wasting their time to go with it and that sort of thing, so there was a
lot of turmoil. But the Opry was strong enough to survive that and
continue to be more accommodating and sensitive to artists' careers."

However,
not before the defections of some of the most popular artists on its
roster, including Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash, Moon Mullican, Ray Price,
Kitty Wells and Ferlin Husky.

And
not before some relaxation of the rules about instrumentation. As Bud
indicates, "By the time I got to the Opry in the '60s, the management
had allowed a stand up snare to be seen. In earlier years, there was a
snare drum, but it was behind the commercial backdrop and the stand up
snare couldn't be seen by the audience.

"By
the time I got there, the Opry had gotten liberal enough that you could
stand up but you couldn't sit down. You couldn't have a stool. No
cymbals, just a stand up snare with two sticks.

"We
also had, at that time, one center mike. If there was a group, you all
huddled around it. There were no hand mikes- I don't think they existed
at that time. The rhythm guitar was amplified but you had to use a
stand up bass. You couldn't use an electric bass.

"You
had to have an upright piano. We didn't use a grand piano until we got
to the new Opry House. Part of that was tradition, but part of it also
was the performing area at the Ryman was so small that we couldn't
accommodate a grand piano. For awhile there we owned four or five
Steinway upright pianos. Every time I could find a Steinway upright Id
buy it, because they were all old, to begin with, they just didn't hold
up."

The
Opry resisted drums and amplification because it wanted to distance
itself from rock music, "but as our record industry and our records
became more sophisticated, what were you going to do then? The artists
wanted a different sound. They wanted a more current sound.

"The
Opry had been run in a somewhat autocratic fashion, because it had the
only game in town: If you wanted to make records and wanted to be a
star you had to be on the Grand Ole Opry. So we went from that kind of
an atmosphere and a posture on the Opry to one that was much more
sensitive to the needs of the artists.

"It
had to recognize that there were other, very significant exposure media
equally as significant [as the Opry] in building a career;
understanding that [Opry members] could make a heckuva lot of money,
instead of being here on a Saturday night. It was still an important
piece, but it wasn't the only way to get to the top.

"For
many years, you could not be a major star without being a member of the
Opry. Finally, the Opry woke up and realized that you could go around
the Opry and become a superstar. So it had to kind of change its
posture and change its relationships."

Wendell
attempted to do his part by increasing the size of the Opry's roster,
reducing the number of required weekly appearances from 26 to 20 in a
given year and adding matinee performances that made it easier for
artists initially to acquire the necessary but variable
points-per-performance, enabling them to make their quotas before
quietly eliminating the points system altogether. This move all but
acknowledging a longstanding double standard re: the issue of required
appearances that was a source of resentment, particularly among the
Opry acts whose dedication to the Opry exceeded that of the
mostly-absent headliners.

Wendell
admits that "None of it really made much sense. When road dates got so
lucrative, you couldn't ask an act to come in and play the Grand Ole
Opry for $100 or $200 or when they were making $20,000 or $30,000 and
now they're making $10,000, so it now becomes a situation, in my
judgment where, if they really want to be part of the tradition or the
family, they'll cut out enough dates, or balance their schedule, where
theyll be there on Saturday nights and make it worth their while and
worth the Opry's while." (In 1999, tradition remains the primary
motivation for the Opry roster's most popular members to perform, since
they only receive union scale amounting to less than one percent of
what they'll receive working a single date on the road.)

Further,
"the outlets for exposure for the artists today are so much greater
than there used to be. It used to be that the Opry was just about the
only exposure of any significance. The clear-channel radio
[signal]-that was the power to sell records."

Wendell
adds that he can't point to any one incident, event or artist that
convinced the Opry to relax the number of members' mandatory
appearances (though, again, rumors of selective enforcement must surely
have undermined the high standard).

"I
don't recall any what I call 'grumbling,' or whatever, I think it was
more recognition that if you relaxed the rule and add a few more people
to the roster, we could do that."(sic)

With
happier artists, Wendell sought to be a goodwill ambassador (with
apologies to George Hamilton, IV) by bridging the gap between the WSM
Radio, the Opry and the rest of the country music industry: "The
Country Music Association and WSM were almost in two camps for a number
of years. When the Country Music Association was formed, nobody with
WSM was involved with it. They weren't invited to be a part of it, I
would say.

"The
D.J. convention was a 'WSM project.' The industry saw that
and said 'WSM is not the fertile grounds that it should be. We can make
a country music association.'

While
Wendell invigorated the Grand Ole Opry by adding to its roster such
stars as Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Jack Greene, Jan
Howard, The 4 Guys and Jeanne Pruett, he regrets that during his tenure
as manager that he was not able to convince West Coast-based artists
such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard to join the Opry.

Though
Bud feels the Bakersfield contingent could have bolstered the Opry's
cast, during the outlaw days circa 1975 he insists there was neither
the inclination nor the pressure to sign, say Waylon Jennings. This,
despite the fact that for all of its tradition, by the mid-1970s the
Grand Ole Opry realized the need for continual change in order to sell
tickets.

"It
was a concern, because we wanted to put on the best country-music show
you've ever seen. We wanted to do it every Saturday night. We were less
concerned about Friday night, because that was overflow. Friday night
was created because we couldn't get enough people in on Saturday
nights. Also we had more sponsors than we could
accommodate on a Saturday, so it made more sense to accommodate more
sponsors and more audiences. But, in the desire to do a good show, you
wanted to make sure you had good, face card acts there."

The
pressure built with the advent of Nashville as a tourism center.
Wendell believes that Nashville's tourism industry had its genesis in
the ABC television network's decision to add "The Johnny Cash Show" to
its lineup of summer replacement TV shows.

The
first regularly scheduled weekly network program to originate from
Nashville (ABC-TV's monthly series, "Grand Ole Opry," aired "live" from
Nashville from October,1955 to September, 1956), Cash's show was taped
late in the week at the Ryman Auditorium.

Johnny
Cash's crew would strike the set after each show, beginning the Opry
crew's race with time to replace Cash's backdrops with the backdrops
representing the logos of such Opry sponsors as Standard Candy and
Coca-Cola, just in time for the Friday night Opry. (Ironically, the
first half hour of Johnny Cash's 60-minute Saturday night hour competed
for the attention of both tourists who wanted to see an entire Opry
show and radio audiences who would otherwise be listening to the last
half-hour of the Grand Ole Opry's first show of the evening.)

Replacing The
Hollywood Palace, another ABC-TV variety series, the Cash
show was such a ratings winner during its initial run (from its first
broadcast on June 7, 1969 until The Hollywood Palace
returned in September) that ABC brought the program back to the Ryman
where it was broadcast on Wednesday nights from January, 1970 through
May, 1971.

Johnny,
himself a defector from the Opry cast (Or, more accurately, one who had
been asked to leave years before when his erratic behavior included
kicking the footlights during an Opry performance), revitalized country
music through the success of his TV show.

Cash,
his regulars including the Carter Family, Carl Perkins and the Statler
Brothers, only added to Bud's pleasure of coming to work at the Ryman:
"Cash was so hot. They were the Garth Brooks of that day. They were
just the hottest thing going. Those were just such great times."

Occasionally,
the Opry has been too successful: Friday night audiences have, at
times, rivaled attendance the following evening, as when the Grand Ole
Opry's most popular acts, Garth Brooks being perhaps the best example,
or even guest artists, have committed to a full weekend of Opry
performances. (For years the tourist-driven Friday night Opry has
maintained flexible scheduling of either one or two shows, depending
upon tour schedules of both tourists and the big-name acts.)

None
of these nuances were of interest to Ernest Tubb. Bud recalls that he
would receive an annual visit from Ernest Tubb's manager and booking
agent: "Haze Jones would come and see me the first of the year and lay
out Ernest's schedule for the year and say 'Here's the Saturday nights
he is going to be here.'

"And
there would be 26 of them. Ernest believed that if you were going to be
a member of the Opry you ought to be there 26 weeks: 'I
don't care what the rule is: Even if it's only 10
weeks, I'm going to be there 26 weeks."

Wendell
"had a different relationship" with (Lester) Flatt & (Earl)
Scruggs (Lester and Earl were commercial spokesmen for Martha White,
the flour company that sponsored the 8:30 p.m. portion of the Grand Ole
Opry. Martha White insisted that the bluegrass duo appear on Martha
White's half-hour of the Opry.)

"Flatt&
Scruggs didn't have any voice in it at all: If they wanted to retain
the sponsorship of Martha White, they were gonna be there.

"So
we had different kinds of dynamics. Marty Robbins would tell
you, 'I don't care what you order, I'll be there. I'm
gonna be there 26 weeks-a-year. Maybe 13 in the summertime, because I'm
gonna do this in the wintertime' Or 'I'll be there in the
winter, but I'm gonna race in the summer.'

"So
different things motivated different artists."

In
Robbins' case, hosting the Opry's final segment became an opportunity
instead of a chore: "What happened was that none of the artists wanted
to do the 11:30 show, 'cause it was late at night. But from a
clear-channel radio standpoint, the signal was the strongest. The later
at night it was, the stronger the signal and the greater the reach.

"Marty
realized that, so he wanted to do the 11:30 show whenever he did the
Opry, because it did the most for his career."

Typically,
Marty would arrive at the Opry having come from the racetrack "dirty
and smelly." On at least one occasion when Robbins was leading a race
he "just pulled his car off, parked it and jumped in his automobile to
make sure he did the 11:30 show.

"So
it worked well and he built up that tradition. Even when we split the
Opry into two shows, we never asked him to do the first show, because
he wanted to race and he wanted to do that 11:30 show when nobody else
wanted to do it.

"Ultimately,
it turned out that he was pretty smart to do that 11:30 show. Other
artists asked to be on his show."

Robbins'
infusing a spark into the Opry's final portion kept the number of
audience members leaving as the evening progressed to a trickle, while
it kept Opry officials and the crowd gathered at the Ernest Tubb Record
Shop, scene of WSM's post-Opry Midnight Jamboree, awake and wondering
if Marty would end his show at midnight.

With
classic understatement, Wendell remembers Robbins as "a jokester. He
was a little bit of a clown and if you boil it all down, we always
tried to get the shows off on time. But if you stepped back and said
'Well, all right. At midnight the Opry's over, so what are you going to
do? Well, we're going to go over to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at
midnight and at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop you're going to have a disc
jockey playing records,' there was no overriding reason why the Opry
had to end at exactly midnight, other than it [delayed programming
from] the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and [toyed with] people's schedules
and listening habits.

"Marty
could excite a crowd as much or more than anyone else, so he would get
'em all riled up-and we'd play with them. Hal Durham was the announcer
through most all of those years and Hal would make a face [of mock
impatience and consternation] and Ernest Tubb thought he'd get in on
it. He was down there walkin' the floor of the record shop [pun
intended?] wonderin' why he can't get the signal down there to start
broadcasting.

"Then
when [Ernest] would come on the air he'd criticize Marty:
'Why can't we get Marty?' 'Why won't Bud
Wendell turn the mike off?' And he'd be part of the
game! It was great!"

During
the Wendell era, each weekend's Opry lineup was kept a surprise until
released on Friday, carrying on the tradition of the show rather than
any particular artists being the incentive to buy tickets.

Still,
Bud would occasionally add a "surprise" act that wasn't mentioned on
the released program lineup.

"If
you surprised an audience (with an unannounced addition to the
show), I don't care who it was- whether it was what you might
call a 'B' act or someone who was not a red hot star; if you didn't
have the name on the lineup and just ran [the act] in as a surprise,
the audiences would just go crazy. They'd think 'Oh, we're getting
something extra for our money.'

"Several
times I knew Loretta [Lynn] was coming by but I wouldn't put her [name]
on the program. Ernest [Tubb]'s name would be on the program, so Ernest
was out there doing his show and he'd start up with 'Sweet Thang' and
all of a sudden we'd run [Loretta] out. The audience just went nuts.

"Then
we'd try a lot of things. Like, we'd put Hank (Williams),Jr. with Flatt
& Scruggs and we'd put acts together that didn't
necessarily record together 'cause they like to do that. Artists, I
guess, they still enjoy that (sic)."

Expanding
on his point about the value-added nature of Opry tickets, Wendell
indicates that at least twice during Johnny Cash's network
show's Ryman run (Cash's second self-tilted show, a four-week
CBS summer series, ran during August and September of 1976), "John and
June [Carter Cash] would show up Saturday night unannounced (Possible
penance? After all, Johnny's longterm sobriety notwithstanding, Cash
never rejoined the Opry roster.)

Whatever
prompted Johnny Cash, a good working relationship with Bud Wendell
didn't hurt and the relationship even diffused a potential
confrontation: Nothing was said when Cash used a full set of drums on
the Ryman while taping his ABC-TV show, but it was a different story
when Johnny brought The Tennessee Three to join him during an Opry
guest appearance: "Somebody told me that Fluke [Holland] was back in
the Ryman's (makeshift) dressing room settin' up this full set of drums.

"I
went back and said 'Now, what are you doing?'

"And
Fluke said 'We're doing a couple of John's songs.'"

The
implication was that those songs required the use of a full set of
drums and that if Opry management tried to interfere that "'John won't
allow that.'

"So
I went 'Whoa!.'

Wendell
left the dressing room, heading "across the other way, because John was
in my office. We didn't have any dressing rooms then- my office was the
hangout for John and June with John Carter, who was a baby.

"As
I recall, there was a little playpen back there so they hung out back
in there.

"I
went back to John and I said 'John, Fluke's over there
settin' up those drums. We can't do that.'
He said 'OK. ' It was fine with John..

"The
full sets were already coming on. We just didn't allow them at the
Ryman. Today we use two sets."

While
such diverse performers as opera star Marguarite Piazza, comedian Jack
Benny and The Byrds had played the Ryman stage (The Byrds had been
about as well-received when they played the Grand Ole Opry on March
15,1968 as Elvis Presley had been when the future Country Music Hall of
Fame member appeared on the Ryman stage over two decades earlier and
was told by Jim Denny to go back to driving a truck), Wendell wanted to
make sure Opry audiences were ready for a guest appearance by James
Brown and vice versa.

At
Porter Wagoner's urging, Bud met the Godfather of Soul at "the old RCA
studio on Saturday afternoon. I met him, talked to him, gave him some
guidance on what to do or how to do it on the Opry; that it
was a live show and 'Don't use any four-letter words,
you'll have four or five minutes and it's a timed
show' and that we didn't have all night.'
Boy, we got a lot of comments on that one, I tell you!"

Did
Brown flaunt convention or just do his "normal" show?

"He
just did his normal show- down on his knees. He was
different."

Did
that experience dissuade Wendell from testing the waters with equally
flamboyant acts?

"I
had Jerry Lee [Lewis] on. Eddie Kilroy told me that Jerry Lee
really wanted to be on the Opry. I said 'I'd love to have him, but if
he turns up this high piano, you guys are going to be in
trouble' 'cause, again, it was the good ol' upright pianos
that I was having trouble finding.

"Kilroy
said, 'I'll tell you what: If you have him on I'll
make sure he behaves.

"And
he did."

Not
that scheduling Lewis' appearance was worry-free: Lewis and "Marty
Robbins were good friends and [Jerry Lee] wanted to be on the 11:30
show with Marty."

Hardly
wanting to risk being upstaged, "Marty wouldn't do it. So we put Jerry
Lee on the 11:30 show when Marty wasn't doing it that night."

Booking
a gospel group called The Oak Ridge Boys was an easier task. Even in
their pre-country days the Oaks "would light a fire under that crowd
when they would take those coats off and twirl [them]; throw them out
into the audience and just really get excited!"

Despite
his love of gospel music, Wendell drew the line when, in late 1973,
Skeeter Davis chose the Ryman stage as the forum for her announcing to
the "live" Opry audience her support of 15 "Jesus people" who had been
arrested while demonstrating at Nashville's 100 Oaks Mall.

"The
thing that really led to [Bud's suspending Skeeter's Opry membership
for over a year after Davis refused Metro Nashville's Police
Department's request for an apology]; the thing that really got me was
it was at a time when we were still trying to find the killers of
Stringbean and his wife, Estelle. And I, along with a lot of the other
Opry people were working hard with the police.

"The
police were there almost every Saturday night still working on the
case; trying to develop leads. If they had a few leads, they'd come
down and talk to some of us.

"We
were all emotionally upset by that. String and Estelle had been there
on Saturday night I had coffee with them sitting around some of those
little ol' drugstore tables I had put in there. These guys were out
there ransacking the house and listening to the Opry knowing that they
weren't going to get caught because they could hear Stringbean pickin'
on the show.

"So
we had all of that going on at that time and that was in my mind. The
police were really working hard on this thing and what really got me
was that the people that were out there at that shopping center- I
don't remember their cause anymore- the police were trying to control
them or do something or other and Skeeter came on there and was very
critical of the police department for their actions against this
protest march out there.

"That
just hit me wrong: That she was critical of the police and here they
were and here they are over here trying to help us solve this murder.
That's what caused me to react the way I did."

Bud
concedes that the Bill of Rights include Skeeter's right to free
speech, but "I really resented her" using the Opry stage and its
airwaves."

Wendell
also acknowledges that Davis didn't link the two events together as he
did. "I probably overreacted, but it just hit me the wrong way and I
just told her 'Don't come back.'

"I
think I just said 'I'm going to suspend you and
we'll talk about this sometime' and that's what we ultimately
did and [following Jean Shepard's intervention] she came back."

Bud
was relieved when Jean Shepard convinced him that it was not right to
leave Skeeter's Opry status in limbo (Shepard felt Davis should be
either reinstated or fired), since while there was always a rivalry
between male members for the limited slots on the show, female members,
so proportionately few in number, were essential to the radio stage
show's diverse presentation.

"I
can remember scurrying to try and find a girl singer or two or three to
do a show, because there really weren't that many. There's a lot of
girl singers today, but there weren't back then."

Bud
stresses that booking the old Opry package shows didn't pose the same
problem since, "each show had a girl singer and a comedian {e.g. Jan
Howard and Don Bowman were part of Bill Anderson's road show. Dolly
Parton and Speck Rhodes worked with Porter Wagoner}, so it wasn't that
difficult to find a girl singer. Maybe the audience had never heard of
her, but she was at least a girl singer who went along with the pack."

Apparently
Jan Howard was too much a part of Bill Anderson's "pack." In her 1987
autobiography, Sunshine and Shadow, Howard
recalls attending a March, 1971 party at Anderson's house. Bud Wendell
also attended the soiree.

Upon
leaving the party, Bud told Jan "See you tomorrow night."

Howard,
who not only toured with Bill Anderson but was also a featured
performer on his self-titled syndicated television series, assumed that
Wendell thought Anderson was scheduled for the Friday night Opry.

When
Jan told Bud "Bill won't be there tomorrow night," Wendell rhetorically
asked if Howard would appear. Jan indicated she would not and Bud
wanted to know why, since she was a member, wasn't she?

"'No,
I've never been. I guess I've just been on so long I'm a fixture.'"

Wendell
was shocked and remedied the situation that same weekend when, on
Saturday, March 27,1971 he surprised Howard by officially inducting her
into the Grand Ole Opry.

Bud
doesn't remember remedying any inequity by making Jan Howard a member.
Indeed, Barbara Mandrell, who was inducted in July,1972, remembers that
"when I was asked to become a member I asked the question 'What must
one due to be able to host a segment of the Opry?' And I was
told 'You must have gained enough status and you must be a man.'"

As
American society changed, so did the Opry and drastic change was in the
air when the Mother Church moved its performances from the Ryman to the
"new" Opry House in March, 1974.

"As
I mentioned to you earlier, I have always felt that the Johnny Cash
television show was really the start of Nashville as a tourist
destination. So all of a sudden we found ourselves at the
Ryman- just inundated. The Opry had always had good, strong attendance,
but all of a sudden it was just inundated with people wanting to come
in, ticket (requests), tour operators and that whole thing.

"At
the same time that was going on, downtown Nashville deteriorated. We
were having shootings across the street.

"Now
there's a convention center, but there used to be a string of bars
across the street; panhandlers, a line for each show; It was a horrible
scene downtown. The major retail businesses had left downtown and we
had the same problems as any urban centers were having at that time."

Grand
Ole Opry management, leery of both liability and attendant publicity
that might result if guests were "mugged or killed," decided that the
Opry's future was not in downtown Nashville. (As early as 1968,
National Life, which in its day grew to become a Fortune 500 company
with 10,000 employees, considered building a new Opry House. That same
year N.L.T. Corporation was created as a holding company, with National
Life as N.L.T.'s primary subsidiary.)

"Well,
here we are, owned by an insurance company; very sensitive to [its]
public image. So, they said to us, 'If the Opry is going to continue,
we have to find a new home for it.''"

Several
sites were considered. "Our goal was a brand new home for the Grand Ole
Opry, including [a] pioneering television facility." (As indicated,
Johnny Cash's ABC-TV series had originated from the cramped Ryman
facility "while during the same time we had been doing eight or 10 of
these syndicated show out of our WSM television location between the 6
o'clock and 10 o'clock news at night. I look back and wonder how we
could do all of those things.)

"We
sensed that there was a real opportunity for major television exposure
if we had first class television production facilities, but
we also realized that we had all these people coming down to see the
Opry; coming from an average of 450 miles. Well, we had to have a park
out here to take care of some of these people who've come these great
distances, because they're going to have to come and spend the night."

Lodging
requirement required a motel, "so our original zoning platforms had the
park and the Opry House and then this 200-room motel."

Initial
plans for a motel were scratched and a hotel was required, for when
Opryland U.S.A. opened on May 27,1972 "we grossly undershot the
attendance." (Amusement park guests learned in 1975 of plans to build
what became the Opryland Hotel, but what would become a hotel and
convention center did not open until 1997 when its 600 guest rooms
became available.)

Wendell
attributes conservative projections to the energy crisis and gasoline
rationing of the early '70s.

"The
insurance company was a little timid about going ahead with plans for
this motel because "If people can't drive 450 miles they're not going
to need this motel. We've already got the park, so we're
stuck with it.'

"We
put the motel on hold, but as those energy problems and gasoline
shortage problems eased, we went ahead with our plans on the hotel and
finally convinced ourselves that more people would come to the park
than we anticipated, so we could build as much as a 600-room hotel. I
hired Jack Vaughn to develop that property.'

"He
said 'You all are going the wrong direction. You're talking about
building overnight motel accommodations. There's an opportunity for
Nashville to become a convention destination and instead of building
this motel that charges $49.99 a night, we could build a major
convention facility, attract organizations, build major exhibit space
and make Nashville a real convention destination.'

"He
convinced us that and he said 'We need to build 1,000 rooms.'
The insurance company, which had never been in this business
before, said 'Whoa! No way are we going to build 1,000 rooms, but we'll
let you build the 600 rooms' and overbuild the exhibit areas and the
restaurant space, the retail area and the public areas, so
that we could (eventually) add the 400 rooms.

"But
with the 600 rooms [actually, 467 rooms were added to the original 600
in 1983] it got to be so successful that we had to add more ballrooms
and more exhibit space, so to that extent the plan didn't work
out, but then we added another 1,000 rooms and then another
1,000 rooms.

"The
whole plan worked very nicely because we got the Opry House built and
open and we were able to utilize all of those wonderful television
facilities at a time when the networks still had prime time variety
shows, entertainment shows and all of those specials.

"There
was still wonderful exposure for the artists in Nashville,
Tennessee, but it also gave us a wonderful facility for the
CMA awards show."

With
all of these incentives, in 1972 "we cranked up Fan Fair."

The
April 12-15 event "came about because WSM was looking to create a huge
event that would draw people to Nashville for the opening of the park
every spring. At the same time, we were looking for a second annual
television show."

While
that show or perhaps "a string of them" each with the theme, like the
annual CMA Awards Show, of being "just another entertaining show with
country acts" never materialized (neither Wendell nor current CMA
Executive Director Ed Benson could pinpoint any specific proposal),
"but that's how WSM and CMA co-sponsored the creation of Fan Fair.

"We
at WSM said it's probably going to take some years to build [Fan Fair],
but we're not going into it to make money. So we'll eat the loss: WSM
will underwrite it, but if it ever makes any money we'll give
it to the CMA.

"That's
why WSM ran Fan Fair for a number of years. We were writing the losses
off of it. Then as it began to make money, we gave back the funds to
the CMA to put in a special fund that they couldn't spend without our
okay.

"I
did not allow the CMA to spend very much of that money- it accumulated
a pretty good nest of it- because I always thought that if the annual
awards show ever fell apart, if the network ever canceled it for any
reason, it's such a big revenue source for the CMA that I wanted a
rainy day fund, meaning the Fan Fair profits.

"But
nowadays, the CMA show is so successful and gets such good ratings and
they get such a good licensing fee out of it that we didn't need a
rainy day fund. So I said 'You don't need our approval any more. Spend
the money. But also, I want to take $2 million of the fund as your
contribution to build the Hall of Fame.'

"When
I retired I did away with that agreement."

Retirement
was not yet on the horizon when, during Bud Wendell's final National
Life years, [WSM execs] "Tom Griscom, David Hall and I felt that there
really was an opportunity to create a cable channel of country music.
Cable was in its infancy, but we were watching it very closely and we
just felt that there was an opportunity there.

"So
we went to our owners [at] National Life and said to
them 'This is a high-risk proposal; a very high-risk
proposal.' Because their business plan we put together
[indicated] that if we did as [well] as we thought we could do, that it
would take us five years to turn a profit. And in that five years we
were going to lose about sixty million dollars.

"But
if it worked the way we thought it would, from that point on it was
going to be fabulously successful. And they believed us, so they said
'OK. Go ahead.'

"So
we built that [Nashville] network and while all of that was going on we
were adding another thousand rooms to the hotel. We were building the
network, spending the money and NLT was taken over by American
General[Corporation in 1982]. American General 'saw what was going on
and it scared them to death, so they put us up for sale.'

"At
the same time, I had been acquainted with [Gaylord Entertainment
Company Chairman] Ed Gaylord, because we were producing Hee
Haw for him, so as soon as American General said
that they were going to sell us, [Gaylord's] people came to me and said
'We really would be interested in looking at this.'"

[Following
Gaylord Broadcasting Company's purchase of the Opryland properties from
American General (resulting in the creation of Opryland, USA, Inc.),
Gaylord Syndicom was launched on July 15, 1984 as a division of
Opryland, USA, to develop shows- like the pre-existing "Hee Haw"-for
broadcast syndication.]

In
order to assuage any doubts Wendell might have about the corporation
that had been established in Nashville (with its first public stock
offering) on October 24,1991, Oklahoman Ed Gaylord told Bud, "Minnie
[Pearl] and Roy [Acuff] will vouch for me."

"Ultimately,
[Ed Gaylord] felt very comfortable with our management, very
comfortable with me- 'cause we knew one another, he knew my style and
he knew the television business (as the owner of stations in Texas,
Washington and Oklahoma) and he saw a reason to be here.

"So
he said 'Go right ahead with it,' but at the time he came here, we were
losing money hand over fist. But it grew exactly like we thought it
would- in fact, it grew a little faster than we thought it would.
Sponsors came in and along the way [on March 6,1983 country singer]
Stan Hitchcock [who had once hosted his own TV series]and a business
partner started CMT."

The
pair "didn't have any money, but it didn't take a whole lot of money to
get a signal up. But then what are you going to do with it?

"You
have to have people to market it, sell it, feed programming into it and
all of those things. All they had was a name and a signal,
so we bought it. ¦ We had pretty deep pockets¦ and [were able
to get CMT out to] cable systems.

By
February, 1997 Gaylord Entertainment Company decided that it had taken
both TNN and CMT "about as far as they could go," selling those assets
to Westinghouse for $1.55 billion in stock (retaining only CMT's
international division).

"The
way the cable industry has grown, you have to have a lot of muscle, or
you're going to get pushed off. More and more of the
individual channels are owned by a group or agency. The
channels are pretty well gobbled up by groups. We had two
channels and not enough muscle and we were afraid that we couldn't
retain our coverage on as many systems as small operators, so we sold
'em. [Back when The Nashville Network first started, Ralph Emery, host
of TNN's flagship show, Nashville Now, had
been hosting a program called Nashville Alive,
for Turner Broadcasting Systems and but for some bad blood TBS/CNN
mogul Ted Turner, who had expressed interest, might also have purchased
TNN and CMT.]

As
it was, in 1985 Gaylord Broadcasting acquired "Acuff-Rose[Publications]
from Wesley [Rose] and Roy{Acuff], neither of whose children were
interested in taking over."

Bud
says Rose and Acuff "were increasingly concerned" about the future of
the company" but felt it would prosper under Gaylord's administration.
[Gaylord renamed Acuff-Rose Publications Opryland Music and made it a
part of Gaylord's Opryland Music Group before reverting to the original
Acuff-Rose name in 1998.]

Bud
credits Wesley Rose's interest in expanding Acuff-Rose's influence
worldwide as a factor in the eventual international focus of Country
Music Television.

"Wesley
had always been a believer in the international arena. He had the
Everly Brothers contracted overseas and so forth, the Hank Williams
catalog and those that were very marketable (internationally). He had
an office in London and he had some publishing arrangements in Italy,
Germany, Scandinavia, (the) Benelux (countries), Japan (and) Australia
that gave us an opportunity to have our finger on the pulse of country
music and its success around the world.

"As
the years have gone by, we've seen a tremendous growth in the
popularity of our music around the world through our publishing
company. We could see it growing. The overseas royalties in the
Acuff-Rose catalogue are greater on the international side than they
are on the domestic side.

"It's
growing to that extent, so I've been a big believer in the overseas
opportunities. As we were developing CMT, to me it was only logical to
put this thing up around the world. Why not? It's another gamble, but I
thought there was real potential and there is real potential.

"Where
I made a misjudgment, however, was that I thought that it would be a
[more salable], well-received [venture] in the UK [and nearby
countries] than it has been.

"There
is a growing basis for it. More and more artists are going over
there...We're getting a greater amount of acceptance. The working
relationship is better between the Nashville record companies and their
counterparts."

Not
long ago, it was difficult to "promote, merchandise and market" country
music in Europe. "You couldn't even get shelf space over there.

"There
has to be commitment on the part of the record industry. [American
country artists] are playing smaller venues, but it's going to grow
just phenomenally."

CMT
International was launched in Europe on October 19, 1992, in the
Asia-Pacific region on October 4.1994 and in Latin America on April 1,
1995.

All
of these launches involved "separate signals, separate networks," and
Wendell sites "overexpansion" as the reason for canceling CMT's
European signal.

Still,
Bud believes CMT's markets in "Brazil and South America are growing by
leaps and bounds." Wendell voices similar enthusiasm for CMT
International's future in Europe, Australia and Latin America.

Last
year "Kenny Rogers and Reba toured Australia. [Reba] was so pleased
she's going back alone. Garth [Brooks]and Alan [Jackson] are
going to Brazil. The Mavericks, Trisha- you can just see those things
are happening.

"It's
no secret that country music has plateaued in this country right now.
So where's the growth potential? If it's not in this country,
it's the rest of the world. It's a great investment but it could bring
great benefits."

Wendell
says Cindy Wilson, CMT International's vice-president and general
manager (who is also a member of CMA's International Committee)is "the
strongest supporter [of expanding country music's impact
internationally] of anybody in Nashville."

[CMT
International is now a subsidiary of Idea Entertainment,
Gaylord's music and entertainment division. Idea
Entertainment also overseas Idea Sports, Idea Films, the Word
Entertainment music group, Blanton/Harrell (a Christian artist
management company).]

In
1994, Bud Wendell's work of a lifetime was honored by Gaylord
Entertainment as the new E.W. Wendell Building became the edifice
housing all of Gaylord's corporate departments. (Coincidentally, that
same year brought about the revitalization of downtown Nashville which,
with the renovation of the Ryman Auditorium and the opening of the
Wildhorse Saloon, gave the area a look and feel Wendell could not have
envisioned when he was worried about muggings and murders some two
decades before.)

Three
years later, Bud Wendell stunned Music Row with the announcement of his
retirement, but again, professionally, Bud determined that his upwardly
mobile career had gone about as far as it could go: "Ed Gaylord has
passed the baton on to his son. It was time for me to step aside."

But
even in retirement, Wendell has continued his philanthropic work which
ranges from his many civic and charitable endeavors to leading a $15
million fund raising effort for relocating Music Row's Country Music
Hall of Fame and Museum to a larger facility to be built in downtown
Nashville.

In
1998 Wendell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Fellow
Hall-of-Famer Jimmy Dickens presented Bud with a Hall of Fame
medallion, given only to members of their select group, on a telecast
TNN telecast honoring Hall of Fame members. Titled "An Evening of
Country Greats," the program (taped in September, it aired December 1)
gave Bud the opportunity to express his gratitude for receiving the
country music industry's highest honor.

As
he glanced into an audience that included Lorrie Morgan (there to
accept a medallion on behalf of her late father, George Morgan) and
Lorrie's mother, Anna, Wendell reminisced about Lorrie's Opry debut at
age 13 and then told those watching that 'Anna makes the best
strawberry shortcake. George used to bring it down to me (at the Opry)
because I was a strawberry shortcake freak."

Marty
Stuart, who first met Bud Wendell during the early '70s when Stuart was
Lester Flatt's teen-aged mandolinist told viewers that his friendship
with Wendell was so strong that back in 1990 the 1992 Grand Ole Opry
inductee bought a used car from Bud.

Wendell
has kept his friendships with other Opry artists, many of whom are like
Bud, avid hunters and fishermen.

In
fact, the desire to be able to do more hunting and fishing was one of
the reasons Wendell decided to retire- at least to the extent that
anyone as active as he is in his community is able to slow down.

Beyond
that, "I'm 71 years-old" and Bud would like to be able to spend more
time with his wife, Janice (whom Wendell married "about 15 years ago")
and his family, which now includes six children (Bud is now stepfather
to Janice's daughter Lisa and son Eric) and nine grandchildren.

A
millionaire, E.W. Wendell certainly has no need to be on anyone's
payroll. At the time he left Gaylord Entertainment he was one of
Nashville's most highly-paid executives.

Pointing out that he is in good
health and that "ultimately as WSM, Inc. evolved into Opryland, Gaylord
and so forth, we became bigger than the National Life and Accident
Insurance company," this company man has worked long worked hard enough
and long enough for one lifetime and is more than entitled to some time
to call his own.

An edited form of this
article first appeared in London-based Country Music
People's June, 1999 issue.

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